Early Literacy in the Public Library: Serving Children aged Birth to Three Years and Their Parents and Caregivers

The important role of the public youth services librarian in infants' and toddlers' development of early literacy skills will be addressed in this workshop. Dena Goplerud, Early Literacy Specialist, and Merri Monks, Youth Services Consultant with Iowa Library Services, will present six day-long workshops, one in each library district. Topics to be covered will include role modeling for parents, introducing new vocabulary, book handling behaviors, infant and toddler development, planning and selecting library activities for infants and toddlers, resources for parents, collection development, and much more!

Dena Goplerud is a member of Iowa's Every Child Reads state team and editor of "Every Child Reads: Birth to Three", a recently published training manual for child care providers published by the Iowa Department of Education. She co-wrote and edited "Every Child Reads: 3-5" and several early literacy training modules for parents of children birth to 5 years old. She has a degree in elementary education and social work from the University of Iowa and a master's degree in special education from the University of Kansas. For several years, she was the coordinator of the Parent-Educator Connection Project at the Iowa Department of Education. She also was the Ready to Learn coordinator for IPTV which included creating and implementing book clubs for families and child care providers.

Registration opens at 8:30 am at all locations except Mason City, which opens at 9:30. The workshop will run from 9:30 am - 4:00 pm, except Mason City, which will be 10:30 am to 4:30 pm. Mason City will have a 45-minute lunch break; all other locations will have 60 minutes. Attendees will be awarded 5.5 hours of CE credit for this workshop.

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